When shopping for desired merchandise, certain shoppers wish to be abe to quickly locate desired products. However, because many of the so-called "high-volume" shopping centers of today resemble warehouses, the sheer size of such shopping centers would seem to pose an obvious impediment to quickly locating such desired products.
Therefore, to enable shoppers to quickly locate desired products, certain merchandisers make use of floor indicia.
Floor indicia, stated simply, is certain information that is applied to a floor. Such information may take the form of written instructions, often tersely worded, which may further be coupled with generally-recognized corporate logo or other well-known corporate symbols, trademarks, and so forth, to thereby enable shoppers to quickly ascertain the location of various desired products.
Such indicia may typically be applied to a floor surface that is generally smooth. Illustrative generally smooth floor surfaces include wood, various metallic surfaces, linoleum, various polymeric floor surfaces including vinylic flooring materials and, in certain shopping malls, marble, polished granite, terrazzo, various tile materials including quarry tile, and so forth.
In general, the application of indicia to a surface for a variety of purposes is well-known to those skilled in this particular area of technology. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,499,781 to Krueckel; U.S. Pat. No. 3,707,792 to Mabrey et al ; U.S. Pat. No. 3,836,420 to Freese; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,237 to Kenney et al.
The current state-of-the-art, however, has room for improvement. In particular, in the last, above-noted U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,237 there is disclosed a two-step method or procedure for applying certain colored indicia to a floor.
A first step of the '237 patent, for example, discloses forming a base layer on the floor by applying a liquid layer of an unpigmented, so-called "metal interlock" acrylic finish to the floor and, thereafter, allowing the metal interlock acrylic finish to air dry. A second step as disclosed in the '237 patent includes forming a pigmented layer over the base layer by next applying a liquid layer of a pigmented, metal interlock acrylic finish over the base layer and, thereafter, allowing the pigmented layer to dry.
Thus, when utilizing the two-step procedure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,237 (to Kenney et al.), the first liquid layer must be allowed to dry before the second liquid layer is applied to the first layer. In other words, the two-step procedure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,237 requires two separate drying steps. The requirement of two, separate drying steps, however, might be viewed by some merchandisers as a "problem". For example, in certain situations it might be very undesirable to be required to spend time waiting for two, separate liquid layers to dry.
Advantageously, and in connection with the method aspect of my present invention, there is only one such drying step.
Additional problems are typically experienced when such indicia--applied to a floor--is subjected to normal wear or traffic patterns. For instance, shopping cart tire marks, heel scuffs, and various standard floor-maintenance practices will ultimately cause certain floor-applied indicia to become illegible or otherwise damaged.
It would therefore be desirable to apply a protective coating over such indicia, for purposes of protecting such damage from occurring.
Yet, many merchandisers may desire to be able to quickly remove such floor indicia, whenever desired. In this regard, present removal practices often include mechanically removing--such as by scraping and/or sanding--the indicia from the floor, such methods occasionally requiring the use of special tools. There thus may be certain unbudgeted manpower costs as well as certain unbudgeted equipment costs associated with the practice of such conventional indicia-removal methods. It is, of course, desirable for the merchandiser that any such unbudgeted costs be reduced to a minimum. It can further be appreciated that occasionally, certain conventional indicia-removal methods will cause damage--to some degree--to the underlying substrate surface, which is of course also undesirable.